The IMD’s agromet services for farmers are proving to be extremely useful to fight the threat of increasingly frequent climate uncertainties, and helping farmers hold out against extreme temperatures that can cause large-scale crop loss.
Growing weather and climate uncertainties pose a major threat to India’s food security. The combination of long-term changes and the greater frequency of extreme weather events are likely to have an adverse impact on food production in the coming decades.
In this regard, India Meteorological Department (IMD), under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) has taken a major initiative through its Integrated Agro-Meteorological Advisory Service (IAAS) for the benefit of farmers. This agro-meteorological service, is an innovative step meant to contribute to weather information-based crop/livestock management strategies and operations dedicated to enhancing crop production by providing real time crop and location specific agromet services with a village level outreach.
Under IAAS, a mechanism was developed to integrate weather forecast, climatic and agro-meteorological information to prepare agro-advisories for enhancing farm productivity in India.
Agro-advisory services translate weather and climatic information into farm advisories using existing scientific knowledge. Weather advisories involve weather sensitive farm operations such as sowing, transplantation of crops, fertiliser application in keeping with weather conditions, intensity of rain, pest and disease control, inter-cultural operations, quantum and lining of irrigation canals in keeping with the meteorological threshold and timely harvest of crops.
IAAS provides special inputs to the farmer as an advisory bulletin. It has made a tremendous difference to agricultural production by taking advantage of benevolent weather and minimising its adverse impacts. IAAS was launched in collaboration with different organisations/institutes/stakeholders on April 1, 2007 for weather-wise farm management.
IMD is operating the IAAS in close collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other organisations. The weather information and related agromet advisories, prepared and disseminated at the district-level, helps farmers take day to day decisions such as, selection of crops and varieties for sowing, undertaking intercultural operation, application of irrigation and plant protection measures, undertaking mulching for conservation of soil moisture and harvesting of crops.
Information received on the possible weather and related agromet advisories help farmers minimise losses due to aberrant weather and save valuable inputs by postponement of operations. Agromet advisories issued to combat extreme weather events like cyclones also help farmers take immediate decisions on harvesting, draining out excess water and other rejuvenation measures.
District level agromet advisories are prepared by 130 agromet field units using medium-range weather forecasts (five days) for eight weather parameters, including:
- Maximum and minimum temperature,
- Total cloud cover,
- Surface relative humidity,
- Surface wind, and,
- Rainfall.
Bulletins are issued twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays, and disseminated to farmers in the regional languages. Composite bulletins at national and state levels are also prepared once and twice in a week, respectively. Fortnightly bulletin using extended range weather forecast are also made available for policy makers and planners.
Dissemination network
Dissemination of agromet advisories to farmers is being currently done through All India Radio (AIR) and the 18 regional Doordarshan Kendras of the country including the central production centre of Doordarshan, New Delhi through Krishi Darshan Programmes, private TV and radio channels, newspaper and internet, short message service (SMS) and interactive voice response technology (IVR).
Under Public-Private-Partnership mode, Reuter Market Light, IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL), NOKIA-HCL, Handygo, Mahindra Samriddhi, CAB International, National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) are disseminating agro-met advisories in SMS and IVR format to the farming community. In addition, a number of agro-met field units (AMFUs) have started sending agromet advisories through SMS in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC)/Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA)/Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK)/ National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
Agromet advisories are also disseminated in both regional languages and English through ‘Kisan SMS’, a portal—farmer.gov.in/advs/login.aspx, launched by the agriculture ministry of the Indian government. So far, 11.50 million farmers have directly benefited by this service till now.
During April 2015, the Agricultural Meteorology Division, with the help of Agromet Field Units, disseminated advisories to around 5.15 million farmers in both English and regional languages to minimise crop losses due to severe thunderstorm and hailstorms in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh
and Telangana.
In addition to this, IMD in collaboration with Reliance Foundation Information Services (RFIS) is disseminating agromet advisories to the farming community in seven States—Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, in a pilot mode. The agromet advisories have covered 1.8 million farmers so far.
Sangli grape growers- a case study
In 2012, the grape growers in Sangli district, Maharashtra, saved their crops from a severe cold wave in the month of January-February due to timely agromet advisory services. The advisories issued informed farmers about the expected dip in temperatures well in advance, while advising them how to maintain the temperature on their farms to save their harvest. For many grape growers in Sangli, the production of grapes would not have been possible if the services were not provided. When the temperature drops below a certain limit, the grapes are attacked by downy mildew. By the time farmers realise that the crop is attacked, it is too late. But, with the availability of agromet advisory services, saving crops from changing weather conditions is now an easy possibility.
Endnote
During times of climate change, agromet services can play a significant role in helping farmers tide over the vagaries of weather, and prepare well in advance to protect their harvests. Agromet services disseminated by the IMD/MoES through the radio, television, and hand held devices are a boon to agriculture, and the surest path to food security.
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In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)